Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Coffee and Internet forums often lead to pondering, and so, this morning I pondered a response to one reader who mused, “Does anyone still fish a Blue-Wing Olive and match the hatch? Like, why would you want to do that? So lame…”

It was a bit of a jaw-dropper and a slap… like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa.

In the history and lore of the sport of fly-fishing for trout, nothing is woven through the fabric defining the shape of this wonderful pastime more than the insects and their imitations of fur, feather and dainty hook used to fool the fish.

From the early records in Macedonia, to the written descriptions of flies in the Middle Ages by Benedictine Prioress Berners, through Schweibert, Flick, the color plates in Bergman, and on to Swisher and Richards, an integral part of the game was figuring out what the trout wanted to eat and when, what the bugs looked like, and tying and fishing imitations of those specific bugs. It was and should remain as big a part of the trip to the stream as the rod, reel, and line.

It also was a part of the sport that dripped of art and refinement. Matching the hatch took time and observation and brought us closer to nature. Those that expanded the myopic view of bugs to the greater world of seasons, weather, and the natural world found patterns, reflections and ties to Solunar tables, and cycles of blooming wildflowers. When the trout-lilies first opened their white bonnet of delicate petals, it was time to look for the black caddis hatch, and the arrival of red-wing blackbirds might point to early stoneflies.

Peering under rocks to find both mayfly larvae, and possibly the deeper meanings of life is recorded in the writings and musings of great authors whose tongues dripped the honey on bound pages that we have savored for a century or more.

So, what happened out there on the river in recent years while I, and many others were watching the clouds and listening to the water-music?

I have a 1998 Orvis catalog in front of me with battered pages. In the fly section are all the names we have become familiar with: March Brown, Hendrickson, Blue-wing Olive, Pale Morning Dun, Pheasant-Tail Nymph, Sulpher, Stimulator, etc. Even the ‘New’ flies for that year bearing the names of their creators had the type of insect they represented in their nomenclature.

Fast-forward to a catalog from 2020, and we see oddly names flies with gaudy colors that look like an acid-trip at the vise. These new ‘Attractor’ flies are now all the rage. They are the cool new IPA of the moment. They bear names conjured up after a few too many IPAs as well: Dirty Hippy, Hippy Stomper, Fat Bastard, Cow Dung, Shag Nasty…

How can the lowly Blue-Wing Olive compete with this? It has no pink rubber legs, no cool name, and no tactical jig hook. It isn’t even made of foam. Dude, only ‘Boomers’ would use that! So, at the fly-shop poor little Blue-Wing Oliver is an orphan again, sitting in the bin with the other foundlings and cast-offs: a whole orphanage of forgotten flies. Dickens would be proud. We can almost hear them singing for a bit of water-time… or gruel. Unloved, these classic flies imitating the insects of our trout streams have been eclipsed by the new hipsters on the block.

“But what about innovation?” I can hear the question already… One angler once told me that “Today we have better flies.” I replied that, instead, we have ‘New’ flies, but that something was missing as well: the art and beauty of simplicity.

As time passes, what we all took for granted as iconic of an era, of a genre, of part of us and our identities becomes overshadowed and eclipsed by something ‘New’. Innovation is a good thing. If not for innovation, we would be fishing with solid wood rods, canvas and rubber waders, horsehair lines, and using only wet-flies. However, when icons of a sport such as the classic flies of trout-streams that match the hatching insect are nearly entirely replaced by modern attractor flies, something is missing. A huge hole in the soul of the sport has opened.

Several weeks ago, I fished my home waters here in the Driftless area of Wisconsin. I was on a section of a river I know intimately. I was faced with failure, and it was a glorious experience. “What?” the reader might ask; “How is failure glorious?”

The answer is that I learned something, and nothing feeds and incites learning like getting your proverbial butt handed to you.

Fish were rising and taking on the surface everywhere. It was windy, and I couldn’t see any insects. Whatever the bugs were, they were small. I guessed and tied on a midge. I even had several midges land on my hand, so I felt affirmed. Every trout in the riffle and pool either ignored my fly, or gave an ‘Interested but not having any’ refusal look. I stubbornly kept on casting and trying, and having no luck, moved on the next bend above. No dice here either, so I switched the fly to a smaller midge with a lower profile and more pronounced black body. After a half an hour, and nothing to show, a single fat brown trout ate the midge, ran toward his bank-side abode, and the hook popped out. Fish: 34…. Angler: 0

See, but now I had the fly that worked… even if it were only once. Thus, I kept up appearances and doggedly soldiered on, failing all the way up the river, and never touching another fish.

Time to do a little snooping.

I spent several minutes looking about the rocks on shore for a clue. Up to this point, I had been as hapless as Inspector Clouseau. I finally turned over a large piece of bark to find the bottom crawling with tiny black stoneflies. I had never encountered this specific insect before on the stream I was fishing. Then I sat on the bank and pondered the situation. It was sunny and windy. The early black stoneflies I was seeing were not laying eggs, they were mating on the bank, so they were not fluttering and diving on the surface of the water. Instead, they were at the crawling stage. The fish were picking them off in the surface film as they made their way to the side of the river. No wonder I couldn’t see anything.

My midge had a black body of the correct shape and size, but it had a white wing. The stoneflies were solidly cloaked in gray and black. The trout wanted caviar, and I was offering them Oreo cookies.

I dug in my copious fly boxes and found some flies I had tied years before to imitate the even smaller black stoneflies of winter often observed crawling on the snow. One of them was a bit large, tied on a size 20 hook. I tied it on, and on the first cast and presentation, the biggest boy in the pool confidently rose and ate my fly. The rest of the day will be one of memories and dream images.

This experience is special because of how challenging it was, and because of the spectacular failure, regrouping and study, the eventual clue, having the right fly tied in hand, and the final joy of success.

Or, I could have tied on a purple size 12 upside down bath salt special with spotted yellow reggae legs and just remained clueless. Heck, I might have even caught a fish or three! Trout can sometimes be that dumb. After all, they have no hands to investigate anything, just eyes and a mouth, and the new flies are better! Sometimes they actually are…

Until they aren’t.

I was guiding a client a couple of years ago, and he wanted to use his own flies. Despite my advice, he tied on a red foam thing with blue rubber legs. He proceeded to catch three tiny brook trout. These poor skinny little fish would have hit anything. Finally, I clipped off his fly, and told him to trust me, even if he didn’t believe me about the micro caddis flies that hatched early that morning and were crawling on the bank side vegetation. Suffice it to say that he was a happy angler at the end of the day.

Sometimes nature herself can be cool too in a subtle way without the gaudy pink rubber legs or goofy names. There are things that are happening all around us that we cannot perceive if we are not listening or curious, and are instead using the fly and the fish as props in a stunt. The bugs and the fish may be more important than we are on the river.

In the end, those of us that are snickered at for being ‘Old-School’, actually have an advantage. If we have an open mind, and admit that the new attractor flies have a place in our box along-side those somber and boring bits of fur and feather, we can adapt to everything. That is innovation without the eclipse. Then, when the trout are drunk enough to hit on that foam blonde at the bar that their friends tell them not to, we can be prepared!

Instead of the angler I recently encountered who only uses one fly for trout all year. He calls it the ‘Dead Lawyer’.

Which leads me to speculate out loud…

When we grow old and tired and gray, and pass from this world; when we pay the ferryman Charon to take us to the other side of the River Styx, will we be the last generation to grace those hallowed and fateful waters with a simple Blue-Wing Olive?

Monday, March 2, 2020

I was poking about in a fly shop the other day when I
overheard an interesting and thought-provoking conversation. An angler had
arrived for the weekend and was going to hit the local spring creeks for trout.
He mentioned that he was going to fly-fish that Friday afternoon and evening,
but that for the rest of the weekend, he was going to fish Tenkara style,
because as he put it, it was “So much more fun and simpler than traditional fly
fishing.”

For those that are not familiar with Tenkara, it is a
Japanese style of fishing using a fixed line and a telescoping rod averaging
around 10-14 feet in length without a reel of any kind. First developed for
Japan’s mountainous and high-gradient streams, it jumped the Pacific and has
been adopted in America with an often-evangelical fervor.

My line of questioning (to myself) was why would Tenkara
seem so much more essential than fly-fishing? After all, fly-fishing has always
prided itself on its inherent simplicity and connection to nature and water.
Just a rod, reel, line, leader and a fly… Was it really simply the reel that
set the two-styles apart… or was there more to it? An angler with a fly-rod can
do anything a Tenkara angler can do, but isn’t limited to casting range by the
fixed line. The two systems have more in common than not, just being two
similar means to deliver a hook tied with fur and feather to a fool a fish. So
why the preference?

The angler answered the question himself shortly as he
purchased a bunch of depleted uranium ‘jig fly’ nymphs, and a package of
plastic bobbers for his afternoon and evening of ‘Traditional fly-fishing’.

Well, there it was. The answer was right in front of me.

By rigging that heavy fly and a bulky ‘bobber’ strike-indicator
on his leader, he had inadvertently destroyed the rhythm and grace of casting a
fly rod. Instead of the beautiful loops of line arcing out over the water like
a ballet to delicately present a fly, he had turned his fly- fishing outfit
into a ‘flop and lob’ rig; effective to be sure, but not graceful. Was that
simplicity and grace, that Zen essence of purity missing from his fly-fishing
driving his enjoyment and preference of Tenkara? I think it might.

For many hundreds of years, fly-fishing was concerned with
casting an un-weighted or lightly weighted fly on the end of a delicate leader.
Weight consisted of a few wraps of copper wire or later lead wire on a nymph.
That was all the angler needed to get down to the level of the trout. The late
Lee Wulff may have put it best when he quipped, “Trout deserve the sanctuary of
deep water.”

Time and innovation marches on, and the desire to make the
fly-rod do what bait-casters and spinning rods would allow led to changes
which would revolutionize the sport. No longer would high-gradient
bottom-dwelling trout be safe from the fly-angler. Enter heavily weighted
nymphs and the increasingly large, wind-resistant ‘bobbers’ necessary to
suspend them at depth. This changed casting as well. High-stick nymphing and the
‘flop and lob’ cast were seen more and more on the streams of the world. Many
anglers today know no other way to cast or deliver a fly. They are wedded to
the heavily weighted bead-head nymph and the bobber.

So why is this bad? Well, no other form defines fly-fishing
more than the art of casting. It is simple, and beautiful to watch and perform.
By placing that much weight on the end of the line, and using ‘bobber’ style
indicators, the entire dynamic is thrown off. The problem occurs with an
interruption of the smooth flow of the unfurling fly-line by hinges and
shock-points caused by the clutter attached to the leader. We are making our
fly-rod do things that it never was intended to do: thus the lack of grace and
the chucking, chunking and lobbing. We cluttered it up. We tried to turn a
ballet into a break-dance and ended up with a tangled tango. Then a new thing
comes along offering exactly what we had before we adulterated the dance, and
we waltz with the Tenkara rod…. back to that ‘Zen’ essence that we miss through
our own clutter. How ironic…

Now I don’t have anything against Tenkara. I think it is a
fun and simple way to fish. However, I think it may be time to re-examine and
de-clutter our fly-fishing if Tenkara is now offering us something which we
already had before we goofed it up.

Which leads us to the new fad sweeping the world, the
Japanese-inspired ‘Minimalist’ movement of de-cluttering and its popular guru
Marie Kondo.

‘Minimalism’ is the concept of removing all the things
distracting and non-essential in our lives and possessions to effectively
create a modern version of the simplicity of a Japanese room. (Think tatami
mat, futon, and a simple table.) Taken to extremes, as everything is these
days, it often sees the eager acolyte throwing away all their books and
mementos, and leaves them in an empty room seated on an austere wooden
Scandinavian design chair in their underwear staring at a blank wall… but I
digress. Camus would be proud.

Minimalizing or de-cluttering our fly-fishing might mean
questioning things: “Do I really need everything I carry with me?” “Is all this
junk attached to my leader really necessary?” “Do I actually use the dozens of
gadgets stuffed into every nook and cranny in my pack or vest?” or even “Is
this actually fly-fishing?”

Or is it all about the numbers of fish caught…?

Of course, I am not recommending that fly-anglers go down to
the river and make their own fly-rod from a willow branch and weave their line
from horse-hair, that might be way too Marie Kondo. However, the more
junk-in-the-trunk we eliminate and the more clutter we remove from our line and
leader, the more we might get back to the simplicity and grace, the beauty and
finesse that led us to take up fly-fishing in the first place. It doesn’t mean
we need to give up nymphing… ( I already hear the grumbling). Instead it might
just mean toning it down a bit… replacing that bobber with a piece of yarn,
using lightly weighted flies, and learning or re-learning to cast.

That might be a very good thing in the long run… especially
if it cuts down on those impromptu emergency room trips where your buddy hits
himself in the back of the head with his three-fly depleted uranium jig-fly
setup and the bobber hangs down off his ear… Sure cuts into the fishing time.

Monday, February 10, 2020

The other day I was reading an article in a fly-fishing
magazine that was proclaiming how much easier it was to get started in the
sport today than it was in the past. The argument as stated could be paraphrased
as: ‘Today we have better and more availability of gear choices, and
information is easier to come by.’

I found myself laughing a bit at this, for truth be told, a
case can be made that it is both easier and yet more difficult to begin in this
fine sport due to exactly the same reasons stated. Follow me as I explore this
a bit…

Stuff:

Back when I took up the sport there were admittedly less
gear choices available…. a lot less choices. In some ways, this worked in our
favor, since we had fewer decisions to make, and spent more time fishing. I
asked a number of the finest anglers I know about their path into the sport,
and the answers all shared common themes. We went to a fly-shop to purchase a
setup, were gifted basic equipment, or assembled the necessary gear ad-hoc
after much research. Since we were beginners, and there were fewer choices
available, we were less confused about our gear. We simply had what we had. One
of us had a double taper line and a Shakespeare Wonder Rod, another of us had a
new graphite rod and a weight-forward line and we all thought he was the king
of the river. Then we went fishing.

My initial setup was an eight-weight rod that I purchased as
a blank and hand-built into a finished rod. I still have it. That rod served me
for steelhead and bass in my local river for three years before I purchased a
five-weight for smaller quarry. For those initial three years, it was my only
rod. A lack of financial means when on one’s own after college did lead to a
rather necessary frugal approach, but I never felt lacking. Instead, I went
fishing… sometimes up to five times a week. The other stories were the same.
One friend had his mother sew pockets onto his old hunting vest, turning it
into a fishing vest. Another friend used an old candy tin as his first fly-box,
and still has it somewhere.

Not to seem like one of those dour “Back in my day” types,
but the reality of it was that the choices we had were easier to make because
the market was smaller, and more simplified.

For example:

To carry our gear into the river we had a choice between an
assortment of vests or possibly a canvas stream bag. Today we have chest packs,
myriad sling packs, fanny packs, hip packs, backpacks, packs that transform and
convert, packs that attach to other packs to form modular ‘Tactical gear
storage solutions,’ and everything in between. I saw an angler recently on our
local spring creeks who was so top-heavy and over-loaded with packs and storage
solutions that he was having trouble walking on the bank. The variety of
choices is an improvement, but not if it hampers our actual fishing.

For fly rods back in the day, we had several large
manufacturers out there like Orvis, Fenwick, Garcia, and the first Sage rods as
well. Here we had what we thought were a myriad amount of choices; more than
enough for our needs depending on our budget. They were easy to understand as
well. Marketing was less sophisticated, and seemingly tried to simplify the
process of selection instead of confuse us. Today we have dozens of major
manufacturers marketing rods with odd but trendy names. Some rod companies
claim they make and sell over 150 different rods, each for some ethereal but
very narrow purpose. Given their similarity to each other, the beginner can
hardly tell the difference. Add in online companies not represented in
reputable fly-shops who mass-market rods made in China at cut-rate prices, and
it becomes apparent that any on-line forum with a classified section has a
massive amount of gear for sale with the description “Cast twice,” or “Fished
once.”

Confusion leads to an unending cycle of buying and selling
in the quest for an illusory magic bean. Less time is spent fishing, and more
time spent on gear acquisitions and unending debate and questions. Arguing with
fellow anglers about which sling-pack is cooler or better may have replaced the
time we used to spend absorbing the lore of the sport through literature or by
getting our proverbial feet wet.

The ultimate complication and confusion poster-child may be
fly-line.

In the past we did have choices between a number of brands
and categories: double-taper, weight-forward, floating, full-sinking, sink tip
and specialty lines such as saltwater, bass, and shooting heads. That would
make up around 90% of lines available at the time. A new line needed to
purchased when the old one wore out, or when a new type of fish or fishing
necessitated a different line. The labels were rather easy to read and
differentiate as well. For example, Cortland had a package labeled ‘444 Fly-Rod
Line: WF Floating.’ It doesn’t get much simpler that that. Garcia had their
Kingfisher line, and Orvis sold their own ‘Flyline.’ What was lacking then
versus today is the hyped-up marketing which has turned the entire fly-line
industry into a specialized marketing engine designed to get one to not only
purchase the ‘New’ thing because it is better than the ‘Old’ thing from the
same manufacturer that you bought last year and fished with once, but to get
the average angler to have a fly line for every river, day of the week, or
lunar cycle. No wonder new and even experienced anglers are confused.

A quick browse through catalogues and websites shows us both
the diversity and the confusing over-abundance of lines marketed today.

Here are just a few random examples:

‘Hi-Performance Fly-line’ (vs. what… like Low performance
fly-line?)

‘Pro’ fly-line (Apparently for professionals… not amateurs,
which explains its $98 price.)

‘Frequency’ fly-line (Does it vibrate differently by
weight?)

‘In-Touch’ (vs. what… out-of touch?)

‘Nymph Taper’ (Because we need a different fly-line every
time we switch from a dry-fly to a nymph, even though thousands of us have been
using a standard taper WF floating line for both applications for years…)

‘Euro Nymph’ (Take your choice: either a line allowing
competition angling with multiple nymph rigs, or a ‘Sprockets’ like line that
comes with electronic techno-pop music and allows the user to wear skinny black
turtleneck shirts while fishing…)

‘MaxCatch’ (Now I understand why I never catch my limit
every day… I guess I was using a MinCatch line all these years…)

‘Fairplay’ (I just want to find an ‘Unfair Play’ line… That
sounds so much better to me…)

‘Clearwater’ (Apparently only to be used when no rain or
runoff starts to dirty the water…)

‘Precise Finesse’ (A must-buy for those of us currently
using an ‘Imprecise Clod-Hopper’ line…)

‘Creek’ fly-line (What about a river… or a brook… If we call
it a ‘Crik’ do we need a different line or a jar of moonshine?)

‘World Class’ ( Perhaps not the best for anglers traveling
to 3rd world nations for fishing adventure…)

‘Cheeky’ line (Reminds me of a quip I uttered at an
attractive blonde back in college that earned me a kick in the shins…)

‘Technical Trout’ (Apparently all this time I have been
fishing to ‘Non-technical’ trout…explains a lot.)

‘Amplitude’ (Must be similar to ‘Frequency’, but this one
vibrates at the maximum frequency… wonder if it can be programmed to play
distortion guitar?)

The reader gets the point… so enough already.

All humor aside, tapers do matter in a fly-line, and one
does need different lines for different applications, but this has gotten
downright silly.

Worst of all are shooting heads, especially those designed
for Skagit-style casting and involving separate heads and running lines. When
this started out, we had a choice of two or three brands of heads and running
lines to match together. Within several years of the industry seeing the
benefit of floating and sinking heads and running-lines sold separately,
everything exploded. The most common question on online forums (see next
section on information) was “Which running line should I pair with a given
head?”

I know anglers today that actually carry with them on the
river something like twenty different head and running line combinations. They
must spend the entire fishing day farting around with their lines…

So what do I have against innovation and choices? Nothing. I
just miss the clarity and simplicity that fly-fishing is supposed to be.

It also insults my intelligence… Since I spent fifteen years
inside the industry at independent fly-shops as well as corporate giants, I can
tell you a little secret… Ready for it?

The confusion is deliberate.

Marketing performs its job when it makes us want things, or
desire to replace things we already own with a ‘newer’ or ‘better’ model. It
does this by appealing to both our baser instincts, as well as to our desire to
‘Keep up to date.’ ‘New’ equals good, and anything you have that is old (ie:
not current) is bad, or outdated… and how many of us want to be accused of
being outdated?

However, this only goes so far. By saturation-bombing our
different choices and making things unduly complicated, (you need a specialty
rod to fish for Small-mouth Bass, not the standard 9 foot 6,7, or 8 wt., or if
you are casting streamers from a boat then you need a rod specific to the
purpose with a proprietary fly line to match and a separate running line and
special nano-friction backing,) the industry maximizes its dollars per angler,
and in a limited market, that is a desirable outcome for the corporations.
Never-mind that one in five anglers will give up fly-fishing because it finally
seems to get so complicated, an outcome the article cited at the outset claimed
was the opposite.

In some ways, it benefits some of us older and wiser coots.
We no longer need to pay full-price anymore or buy anything new since the
biggest market for fly tackle in all of history sits before us in the guise of
things purchased and now for sale second-hand with little use at all…

I just feel sorry for many of the new anglers that never had
the chance to see what the world of fly-fishing was like when we had a chance
to go to the river without so much confusing stuff.

Information overload:

The second part of the claim is that there is more
information available today. That is something that I don’t think any angler
would argue with.

However, it is the source, and medium of the information
that can cause problems and resulting chaos and confusion.

Many of us took up the sport in the P.I. epoch…
(Pre-Internet)

Because we actually read books and magazine articles that
were written by experts and professionals, we were steered in straighter
pathways than today. Read a copy of Bergman’s Trout, Schwiebert, Atherton, or
other authors that explained the nuances and broke down the mysteries and
necromancy of fishing with a fly in chapters rich with information and expert
advice, and one was primed with knowledge before questions arose.

Then the internet came along, and to our happy surprise, we
discovered like-minded anglers of all experience levels sharing information on
various websites and online forums. The world opened and good solid information
flowed back and forth over the modems of the pescadors. Bytes were exchanged
for more bites. I was there as one of the first users of the new technology and
access to the libraries of wisdom out there…

Everything changed within ten years. I stopped even
accessing the forums I used to avidly participate in because as time passed,
and new anglers came online, the same questions badly framed and poorly asked
again and again overwhelmed and eclipsed the solid information shared and
traded.

“What’s the best five weight rod?”

“What grain head should I use when the water flow increases
by 3 feet per second and my fly-rod is green in color?”

“Which sling-pack is the coolest?”

It was a sign of the times… Then came social media, and the
whole world of information overload and confusion reached critical-mass and
detonated leaving mere fragments of typing left to fall like a fog over the
unread books.

I joined a few social media forums in the past year to see
how the questions were asked and answered: it caused laughter and cynicism in
the same moment.

Many of the answers were contradictory or self-serving. Even
thoughtful responses to questions or inquiries only lasted a day or so, and
then someone asked the same question again, getting a different answer.

Then the inherent problem occurred to me.

Not only were the internet and social media venues not
durable as far as a source of information such as a book, it was that by
attempting to crowd-source the answers that the questioner ran afoul.

The person answering the query could be a knowledgeable
angler with vast experiences, an open mind, and with good critical-thinking
skills… or it could be some dude who caught a fish and now thinks he is a
guide. The answers could come from independent sources unbiased as to brand, or
from somebody with a brand entanglement such as the ubiquitous ‘Brand
Ambassadors,’ or ‘Pro-Staff.’ Believe it or not, some companies actually pay
people to provide gear advice on social media forums. It goes without saying
that the answers are not unbiased, and the employing company’s brand is
recommended each and every time. The worst thing is that the beginner, without
a foundation of knowledge, can’t tell a good answer from a bad, inaccurate, or
misleading one.

Do an experiment. Join a social media forum on fly-fishing
and ask a ‘newby’ type question. Save the good, the bad, and the ugly answers
you get. Now wait a week and ask the same question again, perhaps in a
different way. Note the answers, and compare them with one another.

I bet my oldest and stinkiest fishing hat that you will
shake your head.

That is what new anglers are facing if they don’t get their
gear from a reliable flyshop after asking appropriate questions and doing a bit
of homework, and staying away from the noise of confusion. If not, they might
become one of the competitors in a fly-fishing team competition recently held.
Two of the anglers spent twenty minutes arguing about whose fly-rod was better.
Then one broke his rod while the other one dropped his tactical modular gear
storage system into the river.

My advice to the thousands of anglers I have taught to cast
and fish a fly has always been this:

Simplicity.

“Go to a flyshop. Get a matching rod, line and reel, a few
leaders and a box of flies and go fishing for God’s sake. Put in your time.
Stay off the internet and don’t look at any ads. Less information in the
short-term will benefit you in the long run. Learn to walk first in your diaper
stage before you get all tangled up in the underwear of too much confusion and
stuff, and end up placing your new outfit into the closet along with all the
other abandoned dreams…”

Saturday, January 25, 2020

John Phillipson motioned to the waiter at the Fox and Hounds
to pour the wine first for his guest. He had chosen the vintage carefully to
accompany the lunch he was giving for his young employee Ed, who had been a key
team member in the successful conclusion of a major project for his firm. Ed
was a software engineer of rare talent. Slim and dark haired with thick
glasses, Ed was someone one would pass on the street and not remember seeing,
even if the street were otherwise empty. He had worked long hours for the past
six months and even took work home with him to his small bachelor’s house. John
thought perhaps Ed had worked a bit too hard at times. He needed to get out in
the sun more, thus the lunch at his favorite restaurant, and further
invitations to participate in activities that would take Ed away from his
screen and keyboard.

What made John rather unique, he thought to himself, was
that he got to know each and every one of his 92 employees on a personal level.
Like a good general, he reasoned, a good manager and CEO should know his assets
and how best to keep them active, happy, and even more… know what drove them in
life. That last question was one that eluded him with Ed. He couldn’t believe
that Ed’s work was his only reward or joy.

“What should I order?” asked Ed, who habitually had a brown
bag lunch of a sandwich and a piece of fruit at his desk while he worked.

“I recommend the pheasant’” Phillipson replied. “I have it
every time it is on offering, and it is very fresh and well prepared. They
serve it with asparagus, wild rice, and a nice herb white-sauce.”

It was agreed, and John toasted Ed’s health, and after the
wine was sampled, began to inquire about any hobbies that his valued employee
might engage in. After some sundry talk about toy trains and stamps, John asked
Ed if he had ever hunted pheasants.

“No, but I do love pheasants,” Ed exclaimed with some
passion as the plates arrived with the delicately presented breasts of that
most desirable of birds steaming and framed like a work of art with the rice
and vegetables.

After the feast was consumed, and the coffee was served,
John brought up the subject again.

“I would like to invite you to my home for a little pheasant
hunt if you are willing… I have over 60 acres of scrub fields bordered by thin
wooded copses that are full of pheasants. A couple of years ago my accountant
suggested the idea of reducing our taxes by raising game on our land, so we
stocked 25 pheasants and bought several chickens and even a pet goat. The
chickens lay a few fresh eggs, and the goat… well, the goat just is a goat, but
the pheasants multiplied like rabbits. There must be over a hundred cocks and
hens, and I rarely get time to hunt them any more, but now that the project is
over and a success, I suggest we take the time this Saturday for a few hours
and do some nice upland wing shooting.”

Ed mentioned that back before grad school he was a keen trap
shooter, but that his shotgun was back with his parents in Connecticut.

“No worries,” John assured him. “I have a little Spanish
side by side 20 bore you can borrow, a spare game bag for you, plenty of shells
I got from a little ma and pa sporting goods store that was closing, and
anything else you need. Just come as you are, so to speak, and wear some tough
pants and a jacket that will stand up to moving through brush, and also a stout
pair of hiking boots or something on that order. We will hunt together, and
then Ellen, Mrs. Phillipson, who you will meet, will do her magic to the birds.
You also will meet my English Cocker Abby, the best bird dog I ever owned.”

“Do you enjoy a fine Scotch, by the way?” John enquired with
one raised eyebrow.

Ed agreed he did indeed enjoy a fine malt, and would be
delighted to enjoy this adventure offered so kindly to him. The time was fixed
at 1 o’clock Saturday the next.

Sometimes fate turns and weaves its lines through the
stories of our lives beginning with a little incident. The ‘incident’ in this
case was that in un-boxing a fine 12 year old bottle of Speyside Scotch, Mr.
Phillipson accidentally dropped it. The tinkling of broken glass and following
invective brought Abby to investigate, and the poor dog trod on a bit of glass,
cutting her front left paw. There was no other bottle of scotch in the house,
and with Ed due to arrive in fifteen minutes, a change of plans was in order.
Brandy would follow the hunt, which would now have to be conducted without the
dog. More difficult for certain, and lacking in that essential quality of hunting
over a champion bird dog who knows more about bird hunting than the hunters
ever will, but not impossible he reasoned. The sheer quantity of birds on his
land would allow the hunt to continue even without a dog. They would just have
to do it ‘old-fashioned style,’ each of them zigzagging and flushing their own
birds. He hurried to sweep up the glass as his wife placed a bandage over
Abby’s thankfully very slight injury.

Ed was prompt, and Phillipson, upon opening the front door,
was greeted by a unique sight. Ed had on a pair of old rubber galoshes complete
with metal buckles. For a coat, his guest was sporting a dilapidated khaki barn
coat obviously several sizes too big for him, and smelling faintly of
mothballs. This outfit was crowned by an eager smile and delivered forward with
a warm handshake. John wondered, just a fleeting thought in the back of his
mind, if Ed’s hunting attire had come from a short visit to a local thrift
store. But then, he recalled, Ed did say he loved his pheasants. Maybe he had
no outdoor gear, since Ed seemed to be always working owlishly at his computer,
or maybe he had his old hunting kit stored at his parent’s house along with his
shotgun. Well, today he would show him a bit of the outdoor life anyway.
Perhaps if Ed enjoyed it, Phillipson speculated, he could gift him with some
briar pants, a game vest, and even a nice bird gun as an end of year bonus. He
was worth it after all… all those long hours…

John ushered his guest into a little sun room located off the
foyer that he playfully referred to as his ‘Safari room.’ He seated Ed in a
nice leather chair, and took down a canvas gun case from a nook between shelves
filled with outdoor books. He unzipped the case, and revealed the soft warmth
of a hand-rubbed and oiled walnut stock, and case patterned side plates of the
Spanish double. He broke the gun and handed it to Ed.

“This little girl needs to sound off a little. She hits
exactly as you point her. You don’t need to lead too far with pheasants, and I
think a box each of high-brass number 5s should do us fine today.” Ed was
cradling the gun as if it would break or bite him, but Phillipson soon
reassured him, and closing the action on empty chambers, executed a few snappy
swings. Ed said the drop and length of pull were perfect. John was impressed.
His associate knew a few things about guns. This would be a fine hunt, with the
slight clouds, little wind, and a half-inch of powdery snow fallen in the
pre-dawn darkness.

They began on the edge of a small corn-stand abutting the drive.
Each side of the drive was a field, and on the edge of each field were the wood
copses.

“Pheasants, like most game are creatures of edges,” John
explained to Ed. “Edges and Cover. We will split the sides between us and work
the edges of the field and wood. Cover everything in between. Pheasants can be
runners instead of flyers, and you want to kick them up into flight. Try not to
shoot runners, that can lead to accidents.”

“Good hunting!” he added. “We will meet back here in two
hours, so take a look at your watch… I have it half past the hour.”

Ed nodded and smiled, his action broken and cradled expertly
in his right arm, and his galoshes clicking and galoshing as he walked.

John turned and strode into the shoulder high grass and
weeds, beginning the process of covering ground and every likely lie a bird
might favor. After 10 minutes or so, he kicked up his first cock out a sort of
snow-covered wigwam of brush. The bird flew straight up and angled right. John
swung from behind and touched off the right barrel of his Fox 16 bore. The
pheasant dropped in a shower of feathers. It was easy to locate due to the snow
cover. It also helped that John had hit it with a headshot, so it never had a
chance to run, hide, and slowly die hidden from prying eyes.

Five minutes later John found his second bird. A hen, this
crafty gal ran straight away from him and then flew low and flat. He aimed the
fowling gun and fired the left barrel, giving the hen a shot-string of
full-choke 5s and bringing her down dead. As he retrieved the bird, he wondered
at the lack of shooting from Ed’s side of the field. That morning he had spread
a large bag of feed around on that side of the drive, and if the past were any
experience, the birds would be on the feast pretty quickly. He did want Ed to
have a successful and fun day today.

The third bird John flushed required both barrels to bring
it down, and as he was searching for it where it fell near the edge of wood, he
heard the joyful sound of a distant report followed by a second muffled ‘boom.’
Ed must have found a bird! The day would be a success if Ed could shoot one
tenth as well as could write code… but then there were those galoshes… really,
what was he thinking? Ed really needed to get out more often.

The next hour saw no more birds located by John, while on
Ed’s side of the woods sounded like a slightly excited English shooting party
on a driven hunt. No more than ten minutes elapsed between further exclamations
from Ed’s shotgun. He must have found the mother-load thought John.

The time came to make his way back to the rendezvous, and as
Phillipson approached the little corn stand, a final pheasant flushed and flew
left and high. John’s shot was on the mark, and the fourth bird fell fifty
yards off as Ed appeared out of the field. John pointed to the bird, and
motioned Ed to place it in his game bag, as he was much closer. Ed’s bag, John
was very pleased to note, was sagging heavily and very full. The pheasant was
added to the bag and the tail feathers stuck jauntily out as Ed smiled.

“Well, how did it go?” John asked with a wink.

“I had the best time ever!” Ed exclaimed with flushed
cheeks. “Some of the pheasants flew kind of strange, and one just sat there,
and then there was one that perched in a tree, but I only missed a few shots! I
even hit a double…”

“Pheasants can be like that sometimes,” John explained as
they walked back to the barn to breast-out the birds. “Predictability is not a
pheasant’s strong suit.”

Phillipson had a bench at waist-height covered with plastic
sheeting and a tin garbage container ready to accept the offal. He reached in
his back game pouch and placed his three pheasants on the table. Ed opened the
strap and turned out the contents of his bag next to it.

There are moments that time seems to move rather slowly. At
this very moment, it crawled in slow motion. The contents of the bag that
tumbled out onto the table included in order:

One cock pheasant (The one that Phillipson dispatched)

A large woodpecker.

One pigeon

Two grackles

A starling

One female cardinal

And wearing a rather stupefied expression, as if to say “Now
what the hell?” a very dead member of the small Phillipson stock of chickens.

“Well, what do you think?” Ed proudly exclaimed.

The words almost formed in John’s mouth, but both because he
caught himself in time, and due to the fact that his jaw was hanging open, only
a sort of strangling gurgle made itself heard. He finally closed his mouth,
straightened to his full six feet and with his back rigid, and his hand
extended, turned to Ed, shook his hand, and exclaimed, “Good shooting!”

As he lined up the birds for dressing and stropped his
knife, he reflected that it would not pay to even mention or explain to Ed what
he had done, nor to inquire if Ed indeed had ever actually seen a pheasant
before, and if he had or had not, what the heck he was thinking…

His knife hovered carefully over the little starling.

Ellen (Mrs. Phillipson) was presented a tray of ‘Pheasant
breasts’ in the kitchen with a whisper from John. She arched her eyebrows in
reply, and John placed his forefinger to his lips and winked.

Seated in the ‘Safari room’ after being introduced the
smiling and lovely Mrs. Phillipson, Ed was offered a large snifter-glass of
amber liquid. John proposed a toast, but Ed insisted in presenting a tribute
instead. “To my first hunt and your excellent hospitality,” he proclaimed.

“Excellent Scotch,” he added on the subject of the brandy.
The best I have ever tasted.”

Both Mr. And Mrs. Phillipson agreed with some shared
reflections after dinner was over and Ed had left for home with grateful
thanks; these were that the woodpecker was surprisingly delicate and tasty,
that Ed had obviously thought of a ‘Pheasant’ as some sort of food he had been
served once or twice that formerly had wings and flew a bit now and then, and
that above all…. That Ed REALLY needed to get out more…

Sunday, October 6, 2019

I just returned from a gathering of bamboo fly rod makers
where I cast dozens of wonderful handcrafted rods, gave casting demonstrations,
and participated in a nice panel discussion.

After these events, it is not unusual for me to go on a
philosophical or thought journey as to what I learned or observed with no end
in mind, and with enough twists and turns or detours in the path as there are
synaptic junctions in my brain. This often results in a headache, and aspirin
might be in order, or a visit to a psychiatrist.

In this case my reflections centered on the design of tapers
for bamboo rods. Some discussions of the legendary rod builder Everett
Garrison, a structural engineer who used an engineering and mathematical approach
to try to achieve a chimeral concept of the perfect taper in a fly rod were
juxtaposed in my mind with the final product on the rod racks outside. Each rod
was different, and each was made by a different builder. No rod had the same
aesthetics.

Would it even be possible to build the perfect fly rod, and
what is perfection exactly?

What is measurable, and what cannot or should not be
measured?

Where do engineering, art, craft, nature’s material, and
casting meet or cross paths?

Can perfection be measured?

Where does the human element come in?

So many questions to explore… so enjoy this little thought
experiment with me…

Lets imagine that there is an engineer working for years in
his attic on the perfect mathematical model for taper design. One day he
finally finishes testing and proofing all the math, and designs a computer
program to reflect it. One simply enters the variables of rod length, line
weight, number of sections, ferrule measurement, etc. into the program, hits
the calculate button, and gets the results. Scrolling through the report
schematics we now have calculated stresses, deflection numbers, measured
diameters at intervals for planing, load calculations, and all the other myriad
elements of structural engineering design right there at our fingertips. Charts
and graphs display the performance of the rod too, so that we can visually see
the calculation’s resulting perfection.

“Excellent,” mutters our engineer, and begins the long
process of splitting the cane, and putting it through all his machines to
bevel, taper, bind, heat-treat and transform the natural bamboo into a blank
ready for hand finishing. Numbers guided the machines through their process,
the cane being ground and shaved to the mathematically perfect model, while the
human hand moved the pieces between the machines.

Finally, the guides were wrapped on, the varnish applied and
let to dry, and eventually the rod was finished. It gleamed with perfection.

Our engineer took the rod out on his front lawn, attached a
reel, strung up the rod, poured himself a half a glass of wine to celebrate the
perfect rod, pulled out thirty feet of line, and with a grin… made the
inaugural cast.

Alas, the puzzled and quizzical look on his face did not
derive from the poor quality of the wine he sipped. Instead, it sprung from the
rather unspectacular performance of the rod. He had expected bells to go off,
epiphanies to form, and a piercing light to part the fogs and miasmas of past
fly rod designs, but what he just experienced was rather anticlimactic.

He cast the rod for an hour, testing the flex with short and
long casts and trying to get a feeling for what the rod was doing. It seemed to
do everything moderately well…. but not

spectacularly. It had no real clunky spots or faults but
also no real shining performance attributes. It was just sort of… fly-roddy in
a non-descript mediocre way.

He went back inside and spent the rest of the week checking
his engineering math and computer program, and finding no errors at all,
re-entered the variable data, getting the same result.

Then he took the rod to his local fly-fishing club, and
asked the members to cast it and provide their feedback. The following is a
faithful recording of the often reluctant but mostly honest commentary:

“Beautiful to look at, but it doesn’t sing to me.”

“A little fast and slow at the same time.”

“A nice rod if you like Wonderbread…”

“It does everything right, but yet something is wrong…”

“It seems to have no real personality…”

“Reminds me of a punch we made at my frat house in college.
We each added different ingredients and liquors until there were over 20
substances in that bowl. It got us drunk, but it tasted like gasoline.”

And finally… “I don’t get it…”

So what went wrong?

Well, from a pure engineering standpoint, nothing did. The
measurements were perfect. It was what could not be measured by engineering and
math, the myriad variables, the human element, the creative process, the lack
of art and involvement, the clinically dry and romantically sterile approach that
doomed the rod to failure.

What if he had succeeded? Where would we go from there? Is
there life after perfection? Would perfection eliminate personality and
diversity? Would uniqueness die under the dissecting table of science? I would
ask him if I could, but I have never met science on the river. If I did ask
science how he felt today, he would probably answer, “Rather methodical, thank
you!”

Imagine a world where every fly rod was the same. It might
make a good horror movie. It could be called ‘Perfection’ because only in the
fantasy world of movies could perfection even exist.

Perfection is a human concept. It cannot and does not exist
in nature. There is no perfect tree, perfect flower, perfect raindrop, or
perfect human. Every object and individual is different in some way, shape, or
form. So is bamboo. It is not a manufactured substance that can be predicted.
It is a natural grass that is effected by the wind, moisture, rain, where it
grows, when it is cut, and how it is stored. One could say that every culm of
raw bamboo has character traits and personality. Now those are human
attributes, but perhaps the human was missing in our perfect fly rod
experiment. Humans can interpret, apply abstract concepts and even imbibe a
fine crafted object with a little of their personality. Mathematics cannot.
That’s not to say that mathematics and engineering should not be a part of the
design, indeed they are necessary and vital, but with a human there to provide
a touch of well… humanity and personality to the process. Machines do not
create, humans do. Machines perform tasks and duplications. Human thought put
them there.

And… of course… a machine will not be casting the finished
bamboo fly rod, a human will.

Each of us has a different casting stroke, a different
approach to casting a fly rod, and a different level of proficiency. There is
no perfect cast as there is no perfect fly rod taper. Even our mood effects the
cast… the mortgage is due… that was a beautiful sunrise… these trout are so
frustrating… I better hurry because I only have an hour to fish… Gosh, I feel
so relaxed…

Another variable that math and engineering can’t take into
consideration is that as individuals with personalities, we each have
preferences; likes and dislikes. One person’s concept of what he or she wants
in a fly rod will contrast and differ with another angler. As the saying goes,
one man’s meat is another man’s poison. That variety is the very spice of life.

If we did in effect achieve some sort of ‘perfection’ that
would appeal to everyone’s differences, wouldn’t we instead have to first
eliminate those differences first in the person and then in the product? We
have been there already, it was the dystopia of soviet era manufacturing which
gave everyone the same cars that barely drove, the same clothing in a shade of
gray, and housing reminiscent of industrial chicken farms.

Diversity comes from craft, from a lack of common approach,
from ideas born and followed without being ironed to perfection. Wrinkles might
just be a good thing.

The rods I cast that day all had different tapers. They all
did something different. I loved the quirks.

One thing a pure engineering and math approach cannot do is
add variations on purpose or by accident to a human design or purpose. If we
did achieve one ‘perfect taper’, and had ten different rod builders build ten
rods off the same taper, all ten would be different. That is because we are not
machines… yet. That cyber A.I. nightmare is around the corner, and until it
arrives, we are still in charge of the creative process.

Engineers may be searching for perfection, but on the other
side of the fence, artists are working toward failure. Huh? Well, artists
unlike mathematical models understand that in an aesthetic sense as well as in
the properties of individual objects or creations, perfection is not just
immeasurable, it also can’t exist. By working toward failure, the individual
artist and craftsperson is always pushing the envelope by asking, “Why not this
or that?”

“What would staggered ferrules do here?… Why do rods all
have to be a common length?… What would happen if I did this?… What if I
hollow-built the butt section?… etc.

These experiments not only give us diversity, but also often
end up in failure. Failure fosters learning. Failure is also fearful. It takes
an intact and secure ego to admit and even celebrate failure in the process of
creative design.

In our ‘engineering only’ design-process, from start to
finish there is little room for deviations.

These deviations are a human element of the artist. A
painter for example has a blank canvas. He or she has a concept in mind and
goes about capturing that concept as a painting which can evolve as it is being
created. Many artists, craftspersons, writers, and composers will tell you that
some of their best work evolved to deviate from the original intent. A bamboo
rod maker that feels the material in their hands rather than pushing it only
through machines may be in tune to the raw material. In other words, the bamboo
might be in charge to some extent, of the evolution of the taper. It may be
able to tell us what needs planing or shaving here and there. This might be
more in keeping with crafting a fine casting fishing instrument out of a
natural substance instead of conquering it or forcing our will on it with a
pure mathematical model.

This is how all artist-quality musical instruments are
crafted. There is an intensive process that involves adaptation in the horn or
violin to achieve a unique and rich sound. That could be comparable to the vibrations
in bamboo listened to by the rod crafter and interpreted into a fine casting
instrument. One can’t really listen very well when machines are making noise.

Which brings us back to the very beginning and Mr. Garrison.
Now before you poor readers of this philosophic detour off the deep end send me
letters excoriating me for some sort of heresy against this fine rod-builder,
let me say that Garrison made a great cane rod; one of the finest out there,
and even if the search for the ‘perfect-taper’ may be illusory, we should still
search for it. For in that search, the conversation continues. The language of
that conversation being perhaps a bit more wine-enhanced and romanticized
rather than mathematical… The ‘perfect-taper’ awaits… if we close our eyes we
almost touch it.

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

Jr. Trout (proper family name Jr. Brown esq.) was a tad late
arriving under the bank in the family domicile in time for his evening meal. As
he nosed through the silt and rocks to munch vittles of fresh-water shrimp
appetizer and awaited the main course of Hendrickson nymphs, his Grandpa eyed
him suspiciously.

“Boy, you have been hanging out with those brook trout again
haven’t you? Now don’t lie to me.”

Jr. kind of wiggled his fins in a guilty manner and looked
askance at the old man. His grandpa was the oldest of the Brown clan in this
part of the stream under the shade trees. He had scars on his back from
disagreements with herons, and his fins were a bit worn with age. He was no longer
the biggest fish in the pool, but he was the wisest, and all the extended Brown
family looked to him for sage guidance.

“Sorry Grandpa, but it is hard to stay away ‘cause they are
my friends. They even taught me a new game called ‘chase the tail’ today!”

“Son…” the old man began slowly with a frown, “I have told
you before that those darn fish are no good for you. They are Yankees, and like
Yankees, they hang around in gangs and get up to no good. Look at them there in
the middle of the water just swimming around like they don’t have a care in the
world. If they had any self-respect they would be in the shade being quiet, not
doing acrobatics and water-polo where any darned otter or even uncle Fritz
could make a meal of them.”

“Why do you call them ‘Yankees’ Grandpa?” Junior asked
carefully.

“Because they are American Trout, boy! See their colors?
Like the American flag; all gaudy in their red, white, and blue.”

“Catholics too I would bet, and just as catholic in their
tastes… they don’t give a damn what they eat for heaven’s sake.”

“And we are Germans, right Grandpa?”

“Germans, Protestants, and gentleman too,” the wise one
said, swelling up with pride and showing off his spots. “Just look at our
colors… Like the German flag, gold, red, and black… quiet colors, respectful
colors.” Like gentlemen, we Browns are not frivolous. We don’t play games, we
shy away from bright places and street-corners, and we absolutely don’t eat
wooly-buggers.”

“What’s a wooly-bugger Grandpa,” came the inevitable
question.

“Well now, take a seat by this here rock, and I will tell
you. Don’t tell your Mother or Father or they will get sore at me again for
frightening you, but I think any Brown in this family should know a few things
before they go out into the next pool. Served me well for years, even if I
learned the hard way myself by making the mistakes I keep scolding you about.”

The old trout rested back on his little pile of gravel, and
taking a caddis case from his pocket, began slowly chewing it as he always did
when he was telling a story.

“You had a cousin named McSpotty once upon a time. Lot older
than you. He was a distant cousin too from some island, on your Grandma’s
side,” he recollected with a frown or a wink… it was often hard to tell the
difference.

"This young trout got his name from the amount of spots on
his side… all black and few red. He was wont to fraternize with those brookies,
and even to tipple a bit of brackish water even at his young age. You couldn’t
tell him anything or get any sense to stick in his noggin no matter how often
we tried. He was always chasing the ladies, even the American gals that hung
out in shallow water and had bad reputations. He went to worship on Sunday, but
we never could find him for scripture during the week.”

“Well, McSpotty started to get a taste for exotic foods. I
always blame those brookies for corrupting him, but he never would have come to
trouble if he ate plain fare like us Continental Browns. He began to chase
worms and leap at dragonflies like a hoodlum. He left home after a bit, and
preferred the company of his new friends on the wrong side of the rocks.”

“One day there was a big commotion and splashing in the
water. After a bit, some of your relations and me swam over from the bank to
investigate. Your Cousin was nowhere to be seen. Story has it that there was
something in the water that the Americans were chasing, but McSpotty got there
first. From there it was hearsay. Some of those fish claimed that a giant hand
came down from the sky and just scooped him up. Others said that he exploded
all by himself. Anyway, he was never seen again. One old gal, the matriarch of
the clan, by the name of Char or something like that, finally said that he had
eaten a wooly bugger. None of us knew what that was at the time.”

“You can imagine that it put us off our food for a spell,
and even the frisky fingerlings stayed close to home for the next week. Rumors
as to what a ‘wooly-bugger’ was began to run their course among the youngsters,
and even the old-timers began to tell stories.”

“Some said it was a ghost that appeared when the sun was
high and the sand was shifting, others speculated that it was bigger than a
beaver or a muskrat and only ate trout who missed church or lied to their
parents. My own uncle Günter thought that they came with the rains, and lulled
their prey to sleep with a song before they ate them.”

“Did you ever see a wooly-bugger yourself Grandpa?” Jr.
asked with a shiver of his dorsal fin.

“I did see one once, not close-up like, but in the distance
and in murky water. It was big and black and ugly, yet enticing. I felt my will
tried as it shimmered and wiggled like one of those belly-dancers I read about
once in my Pa’s magazines. I still shudder at that memory. Funny thing was,
even with all my teaching and learning, my discipline faltered for a fraction
of a second. I started to swim over to it when it just disappeared out of the
water. Don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t have off and left. I
might not be here now.”

That story made a bit of an impression on our young lad. For
a month, he did all his schoolwork, and never swam in the shallows. However, as
all boys are fickle, there came one day when his family was all out on some
errand or another, and he swam over to find out what the brookies were up to.

At supper that evening, he claimed he had no appetite, and
begged off his caddis soufflé. His Grandpa got suspicious.

“What’s that scar doing on your jaw there son? Have you been
rubbing your nose on mussel shells again?”

“Mrrn…” was all Jr. could answer.

“Speak up boy, and come closer. Is that a hole in your
mouth? You are getting a likkin if you got any body piercings. You know how we
feel about that….”

“Well, speak up…”

“Mi mink mi mate a mooly mugger,” Jr. confessed with tears.

“No kidding. You don’t seem to have disappeared, so maybe it
taught you a lesson. What did it look like?”

Jr. flexed his jaw a few times, shook himself, stood on his
head, blew some water through his gills, and feeling a touch better, answered
his Grandpa.

“Mit was morrible! First it looked big and black and ugly,
then after I ate it, it tasted like hurting and changed to the hugest, most
ugly thing I ever saw. It had a big floppy head and its fins were really long
and pale. One of them had a long pole as big as this whole stream in it. I
thought I was a goner for sure, but somehow I escaped!”

Grandpa stared long and hard at the boy…

“Now, seeing that you survived, how’s about telling me what
you learned…”

“Hanging out with brookies leads to eatin wooly-buggers, and
the road to perdition is lined with wooly-buggers!”

“Let that be a lesson to you son,” said the old trout. “Now
come and finish your caddis, its getting cold.”

So…take a lesson from poor Jr. Brown. Stay away from those
vagabond brookies. Keep out of the shallows. Eat your tiny bugs, and whatever
you do, if you fly-fish, don’t have that extra glass of wine with dinner while
looking out the window at the rains and flooded streams, it only leads to
fables and parables… or wooly-buggers…

Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Seamus lay on his side by the banks of the stream and took
in the fullness of the May morning. Wildflowers were poking out their heads
from amongst the grass and unfurling their colors. The valley was full of the
yellow sun, and the resplendent green that only a spring day can bring; not
quite green… a sort of yellow green… a youthful green, an infant green, a green
of freshness. It gave him a feeling of innocence.

He was watching a long slow pool on the river shaded by a
willow tree. Although he could not locate a single mayfly on or over the water,
the trout were jumping into the air and performing summersaults in the air
before slipping headfirst back into their freshet realm. He had never seen
anything like it before. By twos and threes, the fish leapt into the air as if
wishing to taste the surface world’s greening. A warbler provided a woodwind
accompaniment from his perch amongst the bursting buds of the willow.

Seamus watched the trout for a few minutes, and pondered the
ballet before him. In his hand was his father’s cherished H.L. Leonard bamboo
fly rod. He turned his attention from his puzzle on the water to the handle of
the rod. The cork was stained with long use. He could discern the imprint of
his father’s thumb at the top end of the cork. He placed his thumb into the
impression and closed his eyes, his ears still attuned to the splashes of the
fish.

“Why do the trout jump?”

He thought about his father for a few minutes as the sun
warmed his face pleasantly. What would he have said? He conjured a scene from
his childhood in the old man’s study, a place of quiet and learning; a place of
science and precision. His father stood looking at a book he had carefully
taken out of the shelves buttressing the room, and easing down his glasses over
his nose, was busy lecturing Seamus on the natural world. The question never
was asked except in his imagination, but he knew the process of the answer
would take him through anatomy, weather and barometric pressure, and angler’s
streamside observations carefully recorded and now called into the courtroom to
answer the question. Another book would be opened and another passage read, the
author’s name preceding the quote, along with the date and the page number.
Seamus would be expected to listen attentively as the case was made. His father
was a lawyer, and the study in their large house in Dublin. Patrick McDermott
esq. believed in science and logic, and it served him well in the courts. He
would apply the same thorough analysis to this mystery of the trout. There
would be a reason in the end. No mystery… but an uncovering of motive and
resulting behavior. The fish would be subjected to the psychology of the
individual and the group, and there would be a solution. The book would then be
shut.

What that solution was, eluded Seamus’ daydreams for now, as
ethereal as the memory of his father’s voice, and the smoke from his pipe as
the vision dissolved in his head. He opened his eyes to the brightness of a
flowering dandelion awash in bold impressionist brushstrokes of yellow and
hints of orange; his mother’s favorite flower.

Mary McDermott loved God’s world and his works. She once
told a young Seamus, (awash in stains from crawling through the grass and
garden in the front lawn of their Dublin home), that “Dandelions were God’s
paintbrushes.” He could see in his mind’s eye the ochre streaks on his boy’s
pants held up with suspenders. He had felt that the stains were something bad;
something he would be punished for, and had looked on his mother through tears
of questioning guilt.

Whatever his mother said to him that day, and every other
day she encouraged him or explained something, the focus would be God. Mary’s
world was one of faithful contentment. There was a reason and a will behind
every breath, every leaf that fell, every bird that sang, every bruise, and
bloody knee; that of the Lord and his plan. We could not question with anger
the stubbed toes of life, nor curse the road’s turns when they turned away from
us, for man was the center of a plan in God’s garden, and there was a reason
for everything; one that would include stories and fairy-tales and passages
from the Bible as she combed his hair or mended his torn shirt. What the answer
would be in the end would be sweet and simple, but remain a defined mystery.
Her smile and the sense of comfort in that mystery was in complete contrast to
his father’s academic approach, yet love and security warmed the young Seamus.

Mary would have said that the trout jump because it is God’s
will. There would be a profound rightness and peace in her answer.

As Seamus’ eyes opened upon the banks of the stream, his
left hand brushed against a tiny wildflower opening its purple petals to stare
up at him. Purple was his little sister Rose’s favorite color, despite her
name. She always wore a purple ribbon in her long strawberry-blonde hair as she
followed him through his daily adventures. She was his favorite, and he was
hers. She was as happy as he was inquisitive, his dark curly hair and brows
contrasting with her round apple dimples and tiny white teeth. He made up
stories for her full of knights and ladies, castles among the garden and frog
princes at the edge of the little pond bordered with primrose. She listened and
smiled… and always laughed.

He had visited her in her house in County Claire, married
now and with a daughter and son of her own. The children taking them back to
their youth in Dublin with their antics, and reminding them of stories they
shared over a wine made with those dandelions of youth and crisp as their memories.
Her smile and innocent exuberance had never changed. They had instead just
grown larger with age and beauty.

Seamus recalled the day when he (ten years old and feeling
ten feet tall and full of imagined manhood) had in response to a question posed
by Rose as to why a lark, perching in a lilac bush was singing. He was doing
his best to embody his father, and the answer was scientific and clinical;
something about mating and territory. His voice filled with importance.

Rose had laughed and threw a handful of grass into his hair.
She replied “No, silly! He is singing because he is happy!”

He opened his eyes. The trout were still jumping. Where
science and religion only began to illuminate and uncover the beauty of a
simple answer, innocence prevailed. She was right… the trout jumped because
they were happy!

He was happy too, he thought aloud, as he bit off the fly at
the end of his leader, never having wet a line that morning, but instead
gathered wildflowers in his wicker creel for a love somewhere that awaited that
perfect innocence he now felt.

The Classical Angler

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"If angling is the contemplative sport, as Mr. Walton would have us understand, that contemplation should not be on the final destination, but upon the path that led us there. Let that path not be the easy one nor the commonplace, but one of inner discovery and learning, for that much the better when the fish is finally brought to hand." Erik Helm

"“If the world were clear, art would not exist.” Albert Camus

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A quiet rest stop for we anglers who enjoy tradition and literary effort, and a site that intends to inspire, question, and spur thinking.

There is power in words, and art in the angling which we need to appreciate. as we journey through the riffles of life, never forget the art and the approach are as important as the fish brought to hand.If you like this blog, please tell others about it and link to it.

Comment from the archives: This is the greatest writing on fly-fishing I have ever read since the stories of Traver and MacQuarrie. Your use of analogies and the romance and reference to art are one of a kind. Keep writing and keep this art alive please!